Fediverse

What's missing from Lemmy that would make it unattractive to the average user? Remember the majority of users don't post, comment or otherwise interact with the platform beyond voting.

Is there even a second instance running piefed? I've only seen piefed.social

Why aren't we suggesting Mbin over Lemmy, actually? Because it seems like it has the same options. And Mbin even has an app (not just the PWA function)!

Generally, because I think all server-centric AP software is broken and I want to see a client-first application to browse the social web.

Particularly in relation to piefed: it seems to be focused on the exact opposite (giving more power to the server admins) and it takes a good page of social engineering / "nudge theory" principles to guide its design. Much like Mastodon, it seems to be strongly opinionated about how people should behave and it kinda gives me an icky feeling about its culture.

My biggest issue with Piefed is how much space the UI uses. Last I checked it didn't have a "compact mode" like current Lemmy or Alexandrite. Browsing communities is also a bit awkward since it shows you so many topics without a way to sort or remove them.

We have data on what it costs to run a sizeable instance of Lemmy and it's not a lot. How does Piefed compare? Anyone starting an instance who envisions it growing large has to contend with this question. Currently it seems it's got a bit under 1000 users across under 10 servers.

There are now sizeable communities run on Lemmy instances that are reinforced by network effects. There needs to be a significant reason for them to migrate. To that point, the collective project is building communities away from corporate power, not software. The software is a tool to facilitate that. Lemmy has worked well so far in this regard. If someone can show that Piefed can work better and not cost significantly more, it'll probably get adopted for new communities. If the difference is drastic, we may even see migrations from Lemmy.